EU lawmakers vote to lift Marine Le Pen's immunity over tweets

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union lawmakers "overwhelmingly" voted on Tuesday to lift the EU parliamentary immunity of French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen for tweeting pictures of Islamic State violence.

Le Pen, a member of the European parliament, is under investigation in France for posting three graphic images of IS executions on Twitter in 2015, including the beheading of the United States journalist James Foley. Responding to a request from the French judiciary, the EU lawmakers in the legal affairs committee voted to lift her immunity, EU officials said. The committee's decision will have to be backed by the whole parliament in a second vote, possibly this week.

Le Pen's immunity shields her from prosecution; lifting it would permit legal action against her. The offense being considered is "publishing violent images," which under certain circumstances can carry a penalty of three years in prison and a fine of 75,000 euros ($79,650). MEPs "overwhelmingly voted to lift Le Pen's immunity," said euroskeptic 5 Star Movement lawmaker Laura Ferrara. A Parliament official said 18 lawmakers voted in favor of removing Le Pen's immunity and three voted against. Le Pen could not immediately be reached for comment. "Showing and naming the horror of Islamism allow us to fight against it," Florian Philippot, the vice president of Le Pen's far-right National Front party, told Reuters. Le Pen, locked in an increasingly tight three-way race to succeed Francois Hollande this spring, has already seen her earnings as MEP cut for a different case involving alleged misuse of EU funds.

She has denounced the legal proceedings against her as political interference in the campaign, where she is the lead candidate, and called for a moratorium on judicial investigations until the election period has passed.

Can’t have the true nature of Islam exposed.

The future must not belong to those who deny the true nature of Islam.

John Quincy Adams on Islam

In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar, the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust, by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST: TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE.
Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. That war is yet flagrant; nor can it cease but by the extinction of that imposture, which has been permitted by Providence to prolong the degeneracy of man. While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men. The hand of Ishmael will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him. It is, indeed, amongst the mysterious dealings of God, that this delusion should have been suffered for so many ages, and during so many generations of human kind, to prevail over the doctrines of the meek and peaceful and benevolent Jesus (Blunt, 1830, 29:269, capitals in orig.).

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